APB comes full circle… servers to be shuttered

Just over 2 months after launch of the subscription based multi-player PC game, APB is shutting down the servers for good according to APB Community Website Officer Ben ‘APBMonkey’ Bateman. It is not surprising based on the generally lukewarm reviews and the fact that they had a play-to-pay model. Unfortunately, there was a lot of development effort and many years (over five I think) in developing the game that went for naught in a matter of weeks. As much as I hate to see a game fail, this is a prime example of people refusing to pay for something that had a poorly conceived pricing model and didn’t offer enough uniqueness from games with free multiplayer built in. I am sure limiting it to just PC gamers also didn’t help.

Regardless, developers and publishers should take note that it takes a special game to hook players into paying full retail price and a steep monthly fee on top of it. Someone over at Activision Blizzard and Treyarch in charge of the Call of Duty division better pay special attention and realize that taking the game to a fee based multiplayer model may not be a sound idea.